How long before "the company" makes this poster delete his post? I recall we had a poster who had been hired report (positively) on the place, only to be told "policy" forbid giving out information, forcing her to delete the post and have a note put in her file.

Thank you for your insight, VTeacher. Honestly for me, living and working in South Korea has been quite possibly the worst thing I've had to deal with mentally in a while. I'm quite a strong person but even I got tired of the daily blah of being a person of color in this country. At least with the EG, there is a mental vacation you can take every 6 weeks. I obviously know it's not going to be easy -- I'm currently a candidate for the Peace Corps as well and it's what I'll be doing after I finish in the EG. To me, it's preparation for even worse since the PC is volunteer. I'm going into this with my eyes wide open and my guard up. Obviously with most anywhere on the African continent, it'll be no cake walk.

But hey, if you have any direct experience working in the EG or a similar location, please share some examples of difficulties I'll encounter so I can further prepare myself. And if you ever get that union started, I'll be the first to sign up. You seem like you have a lot of knowledge to share so I think you should do that instead of criticizing people for the choices they make for reasons you don't know about. A lot of people have to take crap jobs before they can get to where they do something they truly enjoy. We don't all have the luxury of being born with a silver spoon in our mouths. Of course I am not saying that you do have that luxury but most EFLers are in the boat of taking jobs as stepping stones which, if you are an EFLer, you should know that. I'm sorry if my tone was Disney-esque but I was more delighted to tell people that you can actually hear from these dudes than being hyped about the job, which is something I at least hope you noted.

Anyway, as I said, if you have some insight to share, please post it here or even PM me. I'm just disappointed you never shared your wealth of knowledge before now because there may be people over there wishing they'd read it first! One happy side to all of this is that the employment contract is at-will meaning if I don't like it, I can go. Thank heavens for that little cookie!

I work for the US government teaching EFL believe it or not. I just returned from a six-month assignment for them in Djibouti and it was pretty tough, far tougher than my time in Korea. I think the most difficult thing was the constant begging for money, favors, etc. At first, it's not so bad, but after a while, it wears you down and you start shouting at people!! Anyway, congrats on getting the job. I know that job is very competitive so you must be an accomplised teacher. Good luck!

The job I interviewed for was 6 and 4..so there might be two gigs there.
200 quid a day minus 80 quid tax and unpaid during time off.That also included the day off in country once a week. So for a 10 week period you got 35x 120...ie 4200 quid....I earn more than that in Libya....and won't get malaria.

Myself and several of my friends have had interviews for the Marathon Oil job;none of us was successful and all of us are well qualified and have loads of experience, especially in the oil/rotation business...in Africa too!

I now know of a second person who has been offered a job on this elusive gig. The first to contact me was a female with virtually no experience, the second, wait for it, was also a female. The kicker about the latter is her total lack of recent experience.

Looks to me like threatened, entrenched blokes hiring people who won't be a threat.

Fully agree with the last post.
I know two male teachers who went for interview at different times. Neither got an offer. Both were superb teachers, one with MA, lots of teaching experience and ... both didn't make the grade. So, what exactly are the interviewers looking for?
There seems to be a high turnover, which is never a good sign. Plus pay and conditions seem relatively poor for the location, etc.

I now know of a second person who has been offered a job on this elusive gig. The first to contact me was a female with virtually no experience, the second, wait for it, was also a female. The kicker about the latter is her total lack of recent experience.

Good to see nothing has changed. This EG gig first opened up about a decade ago. At the time, I was working a uni gig in NA with a young female co-worker. We both applied for EG. I had O&G experience. Overseas experience. Rotational experience. Experience teaching technical. Materials development. She had none of these. Guess who got offered an interview and who didn't? Yup.

so, qtfriend2all who started this post on April 1st, 2007. whatever did become of you and Equatorial Guinea ? Did you end up in that vat of boiling water with the natives dancing round the fire chanting your name or .. have you moved onto better things ? Pray tell ..